


Gunslinger, Sledgehammer

by Nebulad



Series: No Gods, No Masters [1]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Gen, meet awkward, meet cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-25 22:36:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12045717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nebulad/pseuds/Nebulad
Summary: A whole world had run by him a thousand times in just two hundred years, never stopping to let him catch his breath or count his losses. There was nothing to do about it either but to try to keep up, and Raul? He was all done keeping up. He was old, even if his body didn’t quite wanna quit yet. Two hundred years was a lot of living, and he could feel it in his knees.Despite that, Raul Tejada didn’t want to die.





	Gunslinger, Sledgehammer

Raul Tejada was a tired old man who’d had too much bad in his life to even bother to look for the good anymore. The world just kept slinging shit and when it hit you, everyone else just kept on moving like nothing happened. A whole world had run by him a thousand times in just two hundred years, never stopping to let him catch his breath or count his losses. There was nothing to do about it either but to try to keep up, and Raul? He was all done keeping up. He was old, even if his body didn’t _quite_ wanna quit yet. Two hundred years was a lot of living, and he could feel it in his knees.

Despite that, Raul Tejada didn’t want to die.

There had been low points in his life when he’d thought that maybe he should, or when he didn’t care if he did or didn’t. It ebbed and flowed— two hundred years really was a lot of time to kill, and sometimes he found that maybe on a scale of zero to one, he’d feel about a point five. It was usually when it didn’t rain so his joints were all cooperating; it made the wandering easier. He was too much of a hothead to stay in one place, and it’d tempt him too bad to pull his guns out of retirement and bring a whole mess of trouble down on everyone’s heads again. Far too old for that kinda stuff anymore, he’d drifted. Travelled all the way from Mexico City to Las Vegas, Nevada looking for something to occupy his seemingly limitless time, but as it turned out there was nothing there that wasn’t in Mexico City.

Well, except Tabitha. She was sure as shit sitting square in the Mojave Desert.

And now so was he, locked up in the prison building and stalling his own death. To say that he was qualified to fix a Mr. Handy was… well it was objectively wrong. Fixing a toaster was nothing like tinkering with a robot, but he wasn’t gunna tell Tabitha that. He did the stupid handyman work that he could to keep himself useful, and tried to keep up the guise of fixing ‘Rhonda’ so he didn’t get sledged in the skull for his trouble.

Until the radio started to freak out again.

He kept waiting for Tabitha to insist that he climb up the tower to fix it— his legs were cramping just thinking about it— but the call never came. He kept the radio tuned in until a new voice came out over the air. It was hard to tell with all the weird static— some idiot must have fired a missile around the tower and knocked something around— but it was clearly a human imitating a supermutant.

Of course, no one picked up on that but him.

Tabitha lost it, of course, and Raul could hear the fighting intensify outside his jail. Something like a laser was shooting, which was weird since he was pretty sure he would be the one to know if one of the big uglies had any sort of laser weaponry. Delicate machinery went into keeping one of those in working order, so it stood to reason someone would have broke it during his extended stay.

Must have been the human, then.

The fighting got loud, and then quiet. Nothing happened for a real long time and Tabitha had long since shut down the radio signal. He… waited. Either he was gunna stay quiet and avoid some batshit killer come to raze the station, or just wait for everything to blow over and then… leave. Maybe go back to the shack, if it hadn’t already been taken over.

Best case scenario, maybe they’d unlock the door after all the mutants were dead and just let him leave. He suddenly _violently_ regretted that Tabitha had chosen that day to threaten him on air, because that meant that whoever was beating down the door _knew_ he was there. Maybe once the station was shut down they’d be content.

It was a full half hour before Raul heard his door click open. He tried not to tense— things hadn’t been good lately, so maybe at the moment he could face death like a guy about a hundred years overdue— and casually turned his head to look at his saviour and/or killer.

The kid had to be just under six feet tall, and had sand brown skin scorched by the Mojave sun. Their hair was all chopped up and black, tied back with a red handkerchief across the forehead. It clashed with the big, obnoxious black and neon _Viva Las Vegas_ souvenir shirt they had tucked into black pants with the sleeves rolled up.

He would’ve liked to get a good look at their eyes— see if they looked like they were ready to come at him or something— but they were hidden behind aviator glasses just teetering on the line of too big for their round face. “Took you long enough,” he offered after seconds of silence ticked by. “So, can I go now?”

“There were supermutants,” they said, like he didn’t know. They had a normal voice, a little slow but not stupid. He could feel them looking at him real hard, and even if he hadn’t noticed, they had an eyebot buzzing around their head that seemed real keen on him.

“Yeah, I noticed.” He didn’t move, because they were holding Tabitha’s super sledge and it had blood all over it. No sudden movements on his part.

“Then why’d you ask why it took so long?” They were chewing gum. The eyebot dropped to about their shoulder and leaned back and forth like it was scanning him.

“Sorry. I assumed the only reason you’d fight past a horde of supermutants and pick the lock on my cell is if you heard my cry for help on the radio, but maybe you were just sightseeing. So, since the door’s open and all, can I go?” Smart mouths didn’t make it far past giant hammers, but the kid seemed a bit slow to the uptake. They stood there for a few seconds, weighing the hammer and watching him from behind the mirror glasses.

“You’re Raul,” they said finally, putting the hammer back on a clip on their back. He wondered how they managed to heave it around if it was built for a supermutant, but decided to keep his mouth shut. He didn’t wanna find out.

“Raul Alfonso Tejada. I’m the mechanic around here.” He tried not to sound impatient but he was waking up all at once. The door was open, Tabitha had to be gone. There was no reason for him to hang around anymore and if the past few months had taught him anything? He didn’t like being in prison.

“Your jumpsuit says _Miguel.”_ His legs felt restless but there was a sledge between him and the door. It was on their back but he figured there was a good chance the lasers he heard earlier were from their bot friend and he’d already spent enough time getting messed with by people with weird robot obsessions.

“Probably belonged to Miguel,” he offered. They absorbed that for about a second too long. “Was kind of hoping you blasted your way through here to rescue me, boss. But maybe I’m not a pretty enough damsel for that?” He had no idea why they were moving so slow but it was hell.

“You can go,” they said finally, stepping aside. Their eyebot followed them. “Enjoy your freedom.”

He was already standing when it occurred to him that he was an unarmed, two hundred year old ghoul heading out into the Mojave. There were more supermutants, more nightkin, more raiders, and more of those cut-throat Vegas tribes hanging around in the desert waiting for some target practice. “Alrighty then. I’ll just head out alone. By myself. Into the dangerous wastes.” He might have been able to make it more clear for them, but it might seem suspicious if he was ready to follow them so soon after begging them to leave.

The eyebot beeped a few times and they looked up at it. He wondered if they knew what it was trying to say— if it was even saying words or had some sort of code, or if they were just one of those Fiends or something tweaked out of their mind. “You wanna come with us?” they asked, and he decided he didn’t care.

“Anything’s better than staying here, boss. Let’s go.” He made a move to walk, then paused. He had to follow them now, so they should probably be out front. Ignorant of his sudden uncertainty, they threw down their bag and started digging around.

“Weapon?” they asked, and his stomach tightened.

“Not really the fighting type,” he said immediately. It would have been better to have a gun— they seemed to be real comfortable with that hammer and he didn’t know how well the bot would fare on its own. A pistol was the best way to keep a bullet out of the brain long enough to let the sledge do its work.

“Lots of shit shoots at me. You’ll want a weapon.” Well _that_ didn’t sound promising. Maybe he could slip away at the next outpost they hit, provided he wasn’t killed and eaten before then.

“If we could make a stop, boss, I got my own weapons stored up in my shack,” he said. They shrugged and hauled up the bag again, heading out. He followed along behind them, suddenly unsure of where to stand or if he should say anything. For a guy who didn’t care, he was doing some pretty desperate shit to avoid death. “You got a name, boss?”

They stopped dead, turning to look at him again. The eyebot beeped and they waved their hand. “Jun, probably,” they responded, then started on ahead again.

Probably. That was just _great._

**Author's Note:**

> [My writing blog is here](http://nebulaad.tumblr.com), [commissions here](nebulaad.tumblr.com/post/162182264019/writing-commissions).
> 
> [Raul Tejada and Courier Six, having finally figured out what the hell the other was talking about, would become partners and ride west together where they would settle & see out their days operating an Apple Orchard on the outskirts of New Vegas.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvrZJ5C_Nwg)
> 
> Jokes. Anyway, I had a Courier Six fic up but it reflected a Jun that no longer exists. Meet new Jun with the right pronouns, whose brain was scrambled by a bullet, but still has a fully functional revenge gland. Slow to the uptake, slow to forgive, let's Raul and ED-E do all the babbling for the three of them. They just demolish shit.


End file.
